IDC: Windows Phone held 6.8% market share in Western Europe in 2014

We regularly cover Kantar’s numbers for European smartphone market share, but today IDC revealed their own estimates for the reach of the OS in the region, and unlike Kantar they cover more than the EU5 countries (Spain, UK, France, Italy and Germany).

According to IDC’s estimates 145.8m smartphones were shipped in Western Europe in 2014, up 6.4% YoY. Of that Windows Phone held 6.8% or around 9.9 million devices, most driven by Nokia/MSFT, who shipped 10 million smartphones, presumably including the ill-fated Nokia X Android series.

The numbers compare to Android with 71.2% 2 of the market, iOS with 21.2% 3, BlackBerry OS with an insignificant 0.7% 5 and Others with 0.1%. It is clear Windows Phone is the 3rd OS in Western Europe, but is about as distant from iOS as iOS is from Android.

In terms of manufacturers Samsung was first with 35% of the smartphone market, Apple second with 21.2% 3, Sony 3rd with 10.4%, Nokia/MSFT 4th with 6.9% and LG 5th with 5.9%. It seems likely, given Sony’s troubles, that they will either be overtaken by Microsoft or LG, with LG in particular showing good growth in 2014.

70% of Europeans now own smartphones, leaving little space for winning over new smartphone owners, and meaning Microsoft will need to focus on converting existing iOS and Android owners for growth.

Windows Phone only held 2.2% market share in Europe in Q1 2011 and 4.1% in Q1 2012, and around 6.3% in Q2 2013. Hopefully we will continue to see a steady rise to the magical 10% market share which should guarantee the OS will be taken seriously by developers and services in the region.

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